Do you still remember the gang-rape of a physiotherapy student last December in New Delhi, when the 23-year-old girl died in the hands of six men after being tortured and abused inside a bus? The brutality of the incident opened Shruti Kapoor’s eyes to the fact that India indeed is unsafe for women.

This led Shruti to found Sayfty, a startup that helps women in India protect themselves against violence and abuse with the help of personal safety products, self-defense training & awareness. “I want to help and provide women in India the same sense of security I feel when I walk the streets of New York City. I feel free and I feel safe. A vast majority of women in India feel neither”, she says.

Through Sayfty, she wants to equip every woman in India with personal safety tools that are portable, effective, safe and easy to use, like pepper spray, that can be effective in warding off danger. Despite being legal, pepper sprays are not readily available in most parts of the country. In cases where people are aware of its presence, they do not know where to buy it.

Sayfty aims to equip 1,800 women with a can of pepper spray each in Delhi and Mumbai. They will also give 200 women in India access to self-defense classes – they have tied up with two companies to provide 15 hours of self-defense training per woman.

But to achieve that, Shruti needs your support in order to raise $25,000 in total. This amount will cover 1,800 cans of pepper spray ($10 each) and 15 hrs of self-defense classes ($35 per woman). 100 per cent of money raised will go towards supplies, education and marketing around the issue of violence against women.